N. V. M. Gonzalez (Nestor Vicenti Madali Gonzalez) b. Romblon, Romblon 8 Sept 1915. Fictionist, poet, essayist. He was the son of Vicente Gonzalez, a school supervisor, and Pastora Madali, a teacher. He was married to Narita Manuel with whom he had four children. When he was four, his family migrated to Mindoro and settled in barrio of Wasig. Gonzalez had his early schooling in Romblon and later attended Mindoro High School. In 1930 he took the entrance examination to the University of the Philippines but failed. He went back to Mindoro and worked as a delivery boy in his father's slaughterhouse and meat stall in Calapan. During this time, he began contributing to the Graphic. For about a year, he would walk from Wasig to Mansalay for five hours to type his story at the municipal hall and post it to the magazine. Gonzalez had his first literary break when he won in the students' literary contest sponsored by the Graphic for an essay in Theodore Roosevelt's visit to Calapan in 1934. He left for Manila, met Francisco Arcellana, and joined the Veronicans. He studied for two years at the National University and Manila Law College, but quit his college studies sometime in 1934. He joined the Graphic, working there until the outbreak of WWII. After the war and without a college degree, he was invited by the University of the Philippines (UP), to teach English and the short story from 1951 to 1967. He became the chairperson of the Second UP Writers Summer Workshop in Los Baños in 1967 and was twice chosen as the Workshop's writer-in-residence in 1978 and 1987. He received several Rockefeller grants which enabled him to take special studies in creative writing at Stanford University, the Kenyon School of English, and Columbia University, and to travel in Asia and Europe. In 1968, he went to the University of California in Santa Barbara as a visiting associate professor of English, and stayed there until 1983 as a professor of English and Asian American literature at the University of Washington from 1976 to 1979, and in 1986, artist-in-residence of the Djarassi Foundation in Woodside, California. Gonzalez's published novels are the Winds of April , 1940; A Season of Grace , 1956; and The Bamboo Dancers , 1959; his published short story collections are Seven Hills Away , 1947; Children of the Ash Covered Loam and Other Stories , 1954; Look Stranger, On This Island Now , 1963; Selected Stories , 1964; and Mindoro and Beyond: Twenty-one Stories , 1979. His most recent published works are Kalutang: A Filipino in the World an autobiographical essay, 1990, and The Father and the Maid , a compilation of six lectures delivered under the sponsorship of the UP Creative Writing Center, 1990, He finished his final draft of a short novel called Kaingin Country and was working on a sheaf of poems, A Wander Through the Night of the World . Also in preparation is the Mother the Provider , a collection of stories. Gonzalez received a special award in the 1940 Commonwealth Literary Contest for The Winds of April , the Philippine Republic Award of Merit for Literature in English in 1954, the Republic Cultural Heritage in 1960, the Jose Rizal Pro Patria Award in 1961, and the Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan ward in 1971 from the city government of Manila. Eight of his short stories were included in Jose Garcia Villa's honor roll in 1926 to 1940. His short stories, “On the Ferry” 1959 and “Serenade” in 1964, won third prize and first prize, respectively, in the Philippines Free Press literary contest. His short stories, which won in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, are: “Children of the Ash Covered Loam,” second prize in 1952; “Lupo and the River,” second prize in 1953; “On the Ferry,” third prize, 1959; and “Tomato Game,” first prize in 1972. In 1993, he received the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining in literature. He was conferred National Artist status in 1997. He passed away in 1999 due to kidney complications. – B.E. Dychangco |
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